Friday Facts #373 - Factorio: Space Age

[kovarex]

Also, for people who are afraid it is too fast. The 80 hour estimate to finish is loosely approximated by being able to finish vanilla by around 35 hours if you try.
In other words, if you don't rush and want to build neatly and enjoy the progress slowly, it will certainly be much more.

[BrainlessTeddy]

Oh the way the water flows through the engine presumably to cool it makes me think they are finally going to use the temperature variable on fluids.

[Xterminator]

YES!! I had a feeling we'd maybe get some news within the next month or so, and here it is sooner than expected!

So excited for FFF every week again, and all the news info we get about the expansion along the way!
The teaser video is amazing, and I can't stop looking at it! The way the engines glow when they fire up and look like they could explode at any moment is fantastic!

I just uh... Hope you can't get killed by other space platforms floating around... I have enough problems with just the trains being after me!

[Gouada]

Woohoo! Excited!!!

[Chindraba]

It's rather reassuring to see that the creator of SE is involved in the work on SA. I don't expect to be informed if they are, or not, or when they become involved, but I believe that having the creators of other heavy expansion mods, or full overhauls, such as Bobs & Angels, and Krastorio and Naulis (forgive spellings, as I don't play with those mods yet and don't know all of them anyway) were involved in at least the hard core testing, and feedback loops real early. One reason is that their mods have probably exposed more than half the little bugs that no longer exist, and they'll probably find the new ones that are breeding in the dark corners of your server room. Another reason is that the size of their mods means they're going to need a lot more time to get them ready for Vanilla 2.0, and even more time to be ready for SA. Lastly, as they think of how they might enhance their mods, or make new ones for SA, they can introduce new ideas that might be easier to work into the Lua processing now rather than later, for an even more polished result upon release, which certainly has a high bar to meet after what has been done with Vanilla so far.

Also, for people who are afraid it is too fast. The 80 hour estimate to finish is loosely approximated by being able to finish vanilla by around 35 hours if you try.
In other words, if you don't rush and want to build neatly and enjoy the progress slowly, it will certainly be much more.

For players like me that's closer to 500 hours. This is gonna be fun! In a few more weeks anyway.

Can't wait for the pre-order, or EA, or both.

Maybe I'd better work on getting my Spoon before then.

[tamanous]

• one turret is missing it's ammo inserter
• one turret is feed by the central rocket thingy
• how is power distributed?
• two collectors are dumping their trash directly into space, two don't
• water source seems to be collected ice
• the engines have 4 attachment points, though only 2 are needed to fuel them with both liquids
• there are no steering engines (except for the turrets recoil). You can't steer or turn, thus you can not stop.

Still love it for its concept.

[blazespinnaker]

there are no steering engines (except for the turrets recoil). You can't steer or turn, thus you can not stop.

Actually, that's a good point. Accurate acceleration/deceleration and all the challenges that entails would be a great mechanic that would go to the heart of the original factorio.

This was a huge miss in SE, imho. Starting/Stopping on a dime makes things more convenient, but removes so many potentially interesting problems.

Trains are a good example of this and how they destroy anything in their path, especially as you amp up their size/tech/fuel. More could have been done, tho.

One of the cool things about how Wube is doing this is that SE will have a really great excuse to get even more hard core now.

[robeja]

About time to get some news!!
just kidding, as factorio enthusiast I am glad to see some news about the expansion, and happy to have more content added to this game I like so much
also respect to you guys for all the hard work you've been undertaking
I'm drooling about the new mechanics and content you will come up with (and checking every FFF as well).
plz take time to make it awesome! (as you always do)

[vedrit]

Super stocked for the expansion! Let me buy it already, WUBE!

[jaggmann]

Yes this is an interesting development for a game I am enjoying still . I think that FACTORIO has the scope to go in a few directions though .I propose that an expansion of the game could utilise and improve some existing Mods ."They are biters" comes to mind .Also tying in airfiltering and how it effects the biters could be expanded .
I propose something a little radical . The story would include the addition of personel .Aspects of the factory requires the presence of personel for functionality and research .The story of how the personel get to the factory and it's protection .The story is that a colony ship orbiting the planet is in the slow process of orbital failure .Drop pods with personel on board are deployed randomly .Some closer to the factory some further away .
The personel have to be rescued and transported to the factory and protected en route .The biters not only attack personel and the drop pods but emit poison into the atmosphere .So the time factor of rescue is also key .Rescue personel before they sucumm .
Atmospere filtering would be an integral part of factorio .
A helecopter with grappling hooks for the drop pods would be the initial transport .Transport would have to be upgraded as more personel would need to be rescued from the field of play .Flying Biters ? The introduction of anti air tech ?

[jaggmann]

Great to finally see an update with real details. Like others, I do have a few concerns:

• Pushing cliff explosives and artillery back seems to make little sense: cliffs are notoriously so annoying that many people turn them off, and artillery has long felt too delayed already in the tech tree
• I wonder if there will be a meaningful win condition aside from just hopping to each new planet
• I'm bummed the DLC is "just" a refined version of the space exploration mod -- I was hoping for major new mechanics like tunnels, bridges, or making water more meaningful (boats, water enemies, etc.). Maybe I'll be proven wrong if we see big new features announced in coming FFFs. New enemies? New weapons? Biomes that are actually meaningful and not just cosmetic? Dyson Sphere Program does this well: e.g. you can setup thermal power plants on a lava world, solar on a tidally-locked planet, etc.

I always dissable cliffs .I wonder however if platues would work .It would involve an elevation mechanic for the game .To some degree factorio already has elevation .Could it be expanded ?

[player8472]

While I understand the decision, the shift from Longterm EA to Release Only makes me sad.

Great Early Access Games (Like Ark, Factorio) made me come back to the game time and time again - ramping up the hours.
When a game is released I usually play through it once and am done with it afterwards.

Factorio is a bit different because of all the overhaul mods, but I can play them without the Expansion. So the Expansion will probably hold much less value for me than if I was "involved" like when ONI (Oxygen Not Included) did the EA for their first expansion.

[Abarel]

I was wondering if nobody noticed some interesting things, until now.
I will talk about some of tamanous' list ↑ and some more findings.

• one turret is missing it's ammo inserter
• one turret is feed by the central rocket thingy
• two collectors are dumping their trash directly into space, two don't

This seems to me like just some fuel to throw into the talk fire
1- There is room to put an inserter for that turret, but we escaped from Nauvis in a rush, and some things were not finished.
2- Is the core facility a multipurpose building, including some storage?
The inserter never pick something (ammo) from core to insert into turret... I'm not sure if the time lapse is too short or it's just that this turret is pointless
4- That surely depends on the filters set on each collector. Otherwise, what would happen, for example, if the collector in upper left corner picks a rock containing some copper ore (or any other meltable ores)?

• how is power distributed?

3- This is an interesting question, and I didn't noticed it myself.
It could be the core building acting like a substation, with some area of coverage for energy distribution, but I think it is actually the scaffolding that includes some cables and pipes as we can see everywhere, but specially in several locations like on the left from the assembler for ammo, or in the upper edge in a small gap between the left collector and the turret.

• there are no steering engines (except for the turrets recoil). You can't steer or turn, thus you can not stop.
• water source seems to be collected ice
• the engines have 4 attachment points, though only 2 are needed to fuel them with both liquids

7- I can see the three (blue, green and red) logic wires connecting the engines to the scaffolding, so it could be used to control both engines as needed; but I think it is not the case here: It is a simplified model where we follow the pre-established trajectory, without the possibility of correcting deviations.
5- Then used as ingredient on next 2 chemical plants, using 3 different recipes in total.
6- The two in the upper part are used for fuel input (two types), while the two in bottom part seems to be used to exchange another two fluids (byproducts?) between both engines.

A few of my own findings/questions, some interesting, some just for fun.

• 8- Why using a longhanded inserter? is that to show that you can use all inserter types in space? what about the burner inserter?
• 9- The gases from chemical plant's chimneys, how does that affect to the trajectory?
• 10- What's the purpose of the red wire on the upper right corner?
• 11- Why is there no box anywhere? For example as buffer between the smelters and the assembler...
• 12- I see no roboports, to repair small damages.
• 13- The lubricant used in express transport belts, doesn't freeze in space? I always thought that in space things should be encapsulated in metal boxes to move them on magnetic conveyor belts, to avoid the problems of (absence of) gravity or inertia.
• 14- I see 3 solar panels, but no battery at all; is that another purpose of the core building? Or is this a kind of platform limited to intra-solar trips?
• 15- There is some kind of rocket launcher in the core, plus a huge hatch; is that for small vehicles? maybe a small reconnaissance ship to explore the new planets before choosing the landing zone?
• 16- Have you noticed the "movement" in the rear part of the engines when the animation loops?

[noname1208]

I'm super excited for this! Factorio is easily my most looked forward to game to have updates and this will be a big one <3

[aka13]

Also, for people who are afraid it is too fast. The 80 hour estimate to finish is loosely approximated by being able to finish vanilla by around 35 hours if you try.
In other words, if you don't rush and want to build neatly and enjoy the progress slowly, it will certainly be much more.

Can you already share info on marathon, or will it be a separate FFF?
Klonan once said that it was decided to offload it from the base game to a mod, of sorts.

Did you in the end scrap it alltogether, or will there be a marathon mode for the expansion as well?

[Carnivale]

Wait, cliff explosives are set to unlock later, once you reach another planet? This is... absurd, please don't do it. It would be just annoying, nothing else.

[Suslik]

Also, for people who are afraid it is too fast. The 80 hour estimate to finish is loosely approximated by being able to finish vanilla by around 35 hours if you try.
In other words, if you don't rush and want to build neatly and enjoy the progress slowly, it will certainly be much more.

I think most Space Exploration veterans consider vanilla to be a 10-15 affair in a "no rush" style. Primarily because after playing big overhaul mods you just get good enough at the game that vanilla-level challenges become really quite trivial in comparison. So even twice or thrice the amount of content that vanilla has is still nowhere near what Space Exploration fans are looking for.

[aka13]

Also, for people who are afraid it is too fast. The 80 hour estimate to finish is loosely approximated by being able to finish vanilla by around 35 hours if you try.
In other words, if you don't rush and want to build neatly and enjoy the progress slowly, it will certainly be much more.

I think most Space Exploration veterans consider vanilla to be a 10-15 affair in a "no rush" style. Primarily because after playing big overhaul mods you just get good enough at the game that vanilla-level challenges become really quite trivial in comparison. So even twice or thrice the amount of content that vanilla has is still nowhere near what Space Exploration fans are looking for.

It all depends on your taste. Vanilla marathon bases are interesting for 500+ hours.

[exi2163]

My guess on the engine is fuel and oxidizer. For fuel refinement a different fluid resource is needed.

What i most liked about this FFF was: i just watched a space exploration run on youtube so from the start i saw those similarities and line for line reading downwards i more and more wondered "wow, this looks a lot like space exploration... did they just blatantly copied the concept? Did they at least ask the author of that? Do they work together on this?" And then you just delivered

Looking forward for those FFF. Also i will love to see the bug report forum during development going back from "If i press this button the game crashes" to "During pale moonlight on a saturday night while a sunstorm is raging the 3rd leg of my spidertron twiggles for 1 frame every time i use the following GUIs in exact this order <insert pictogram with 20steps>" (gets fixed by kovarex with only 2 FFFs needed to explain the bug)

PS: Personally i think this should be a metric for software quality - the average length of the bug's topic.

[Khagan]

Wait, cliff explosives are set to unlock later, once you reach another planet? This is... absurd, please don't do it. It would be just annoying, nothing else.

+1

Everything else sounds either good or reasonable, but not this. At a pinch I could live with the ability for bots to use cliff explosives to be delayed.